wtf?

I’m seeing the Internet explode all over the damn place today, thanks to the new reveal about Captain America in the Marvel comics.

I’m not even reading Cap’s title right now; my exposure to him in the comics so far has been his periodic appearances in the titles I have been following. Notably, Black Widow and Captain Marvel, at least prior to the recent universe reset. The vast majority of my experience with the character has been via the movies.

But Cap’s also one of my favorites. I like him for many of the same reasons I like Superman: to wit, I actually appreciate the morally upright “boy scout” type heroes, when they’re done well. And Chris Evan’s portrayal, particularly in the recently released Civil War movie, has always been about his rock-steady moral center.

This new reveal? It’s bullshit. It flies in the face of everything the character has always been about. Not to mention that taking a character created by a couple of Jewish guys and doing this to him is just full of NO.

The reveal in question, I’m putting behind the fold just in case you haven’t managed to see it yet and care about spoilers.

One of the oddest little details about my medical history is a childhood injury I had to my left ankle that never healed right, and which left me, throughout my adolescence and into my adulthood, with this weird-looking lump on my ankle. I no longer have a clear memory of when exactly I injured it, date-wise. But I do still have a memory of a bad fall about six blocks away from my house, on one of those long walks when I was heading either to the little convenience store where I liked to get candy when I was a kid, or to the shopping center that required me to cross Preston Highway. (I did a lot of walking as a kid, yeah. Which contributes a lot to why I’m used to doing it as an adult.)

That fall, as I recall, either badly sprained my ankle or maybe even broke it. I had to limp home. And since my family was poor, we couldn’t really afford to get it properly treated. So it healed up weird and has had this lump on it ever since. I have a band picture of me holding a flute from sixth grade, and the ankle bump was showing in that. And that’s been why I’ve always been a little self-conscious about wearing sandals and pantyhose, because it makes my weird-looking ankle really obvious. This has been the main reason as well that I wear hiking boots, aside from how I do a lot of walking on my daily commutes–high-topped hiking boots give good protection to my ankles.

Over the years I’ve had to explain the ankle to various doctors, chiropractors, and massage therapists. It’s been x-rayed repeatedly, and the overall verdict was that I’d developed a bone spur in there. But it’s never interfered with my walking, so I haven’t bothered to get it seriously treated. It’s never really hurt either, though historically, it has bugged me if it takes a direct impact.

Which brings me to why I bring all this up in the first place. At Thanksgiving this year, I happened to slip on the floor heading into the kitchen, since there was a slick spot right in front of the oven. I let out quite the yell when I hit the floor, startling our various guests–particularly when it became apparent that I had a nasty bruise right on the bump on my ankle. And I had to explain to said guests that actually, the lump had already been there. I wasn’t as badly injured as I looked.

The bruise faded away after a few days. And in general it didn’t even hurt much at any point–again because of those hiking boots I wear providing the ankle good support and protection when I’m out about my daily business.

But here’s the thing. I’ve noticed in the last couple of days that the lump has been shrinking. Significantly. It’s not entirely gone, but the shape of my ankle has distinctly changed. I can also feel much smaller bumps in the greater bump, which I don’t recall having had there before.

In other words, an injury I’ve had since childhood has shown some signs of actually maybe finally healing. This is weirding me right out, though in a good way. And it hasn’t been hurting either, though I can feel periodic weird pulses in there–something akin to how I felt nerve pulses when my hand was healing, the summer when I broke my arm.

I’m not expecting the bump to go away, though it’d be really neat if it did. It’d be nice to have symmetrical ankles for once. In the meantime though it’s kind of a neat mystery, trying to figure out exactly what’s happening. I’ve been wondering whether the bone spur in there happened to take enough of a hit that it broke up some. Dara is wondering whether the new medication I started taking in September, Singulair, is contributing to reducing lifelong inflammation in the surrounding tissue.

(I got put on the Singulair to reduce some of the chronic rhinitus problems I’ve been having, and it’s been helping with that considerably. But it’s also been addressing various other dermagraphia-type problems I seem to have, so I apparently have issues with inflammation all over the place? So it wouldn’t be entirely out of left field if the Singulair’s having an effect on the ankle, too.)

Saw this news breaking on various sites today, so as a PSA I’ll relay it here: Adobe Digital Editions 4 has got significant privacy problems, to the tune of transmitting data to Adobe servers about books on your library in plain text. Some evidence points to this even including stuff not only in your ADE library, but elsewhere on the hard drive as well, such as in Download folders and Calibre’s standard library location.

And Smart Bitches Trashy Books is SERIOUSLY not amused, and also provides pointers on how to figure out what version of ADE you have on your system if you don’t already know

If you use ADE at all, you should doublecheck that you’re not running ADE 4. If you have an earlier version, do not upgrade. The various links are all reporting that the earlier ADE versions, while they do still transmit a small amount of data to Adobe servers, are not doing it to the scale ADE 4 is.

I do use ADE, but only sparingly, and mostly as a means of checking out books from the library. This has mostly been trumped by me going directly to Overdrive apps on my various devices, though, and right now I’m really not seeing any reason to change that practice. I recommend anybody with an interest in checking out ebooks from libraries should do the same if at all possible.

I saw this post on Thought Catalog going around Facebook tonight, and decided I’d take a look at it–only to be whomperjawed at the first quote I saw in the list.

It’s attributed on that page to N.K. Jemisin, but actually, it’s mine. From this post of mine back in February, during the SFWA Petitiongate brouhaha. I got asked at the time by one of the commenters on that post if I could be quoted, and she in fact quoted me over here on Jim Hines’ last post on the matter.

Dara and I did a bit of searching and as near as we can tell, the point of confusion might be this list of quotes on Goodreads on political correctness. The quote appears there–attributed to both me AND to Ms. Jemisin, although she appears higher in the list than I do. So perhaps whoever entered that set of quotes on Goodreads mixed up their attributions.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a very healthy respect for a lot of the powerful things Jemisin has said about the politics involved with the SF/F genre online in the last couple of years, and I’m hoping to get into reading her actual novels. I know I don’t operate even remotely on the same level as a writer as she does. And in a funny way I’m kind of honored that my words are getting mistaken for hers.

But, y’know, they’re still my words. And a writer’s words are, after all, her entire reason for calling herself a writer in the first place.

Let me tell you a thing about having an iPad, Internets: it means I’ve become way more of a comics reader than I used to be, back in the day when the only comic I had any real interest in was Elfquest.

Dark Horse has contributed a lot to that–not only because they’ve picked up Elfquest for its resurrection, but also because they’ve produced excellent material for the extensions of the storylines for both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. I’ve even dabbled some in the comics adaptations of the new Trek universe, wherein they’re telling stories more along the lines of what I am NOT getting out of the new movies: i.e., some goddamn Star Trek, with obligatory strange new worlds and exploration and such. In the last few years I’ve enjoyed a MacGyver miniseries from Image Comics, the three-part Anne Steelyard story, and the graphic novel for the Thrilling Adventure Hour.

But it’s been because of the Mary Sue and their coverage of certain Marvel storylines, combined with my growing general affection for the Marvel movie universe, that I’ve committed to following some actual superhero comics for the first time in my life. These are the current storylines for Black Widow, Captain Marvel, and the new young Ms. Marvel, that last in no small part because I really like that Marvel’s trying to branch out with some religious and ethnic diversity in their superhero lineup.

See, ’cause here’s the thing–I’ve been all too aware and very sad about how a lot of the comics industry these days is infected with rampaging sexism. But dammit, I like superheroes. I have ever since I discovered the X-Men when I was in middle school. I loved Christopher Reeve as Superman way back in the day, and Michael Keaton in the first of his Batman movies. I adored the first season of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. And I am full of nothing but love for the extended DC Animated universe, that connected all the episodes of the Batman, Superman, Justice League, and Justice League Unlimited cartoons. That was some damn fine storytelling, and to this day, Mark Hamill’s brilliant voice work for the Joker makes his version of the character my all-time favorite.

And it’s very worth mentioning that in the Murkworks, we very, VERY much like She-Hulk. In fact, Dara played her in an RPG we did in Kentucky, back when we were still having our Saturday gaming nights.

So when I see news like this about how one of the people involved with the still-unnamed sequel* to Man of Steel (the one in which Wonder Woman is finally going to have her first big-screen appearance EVER) says some hugely insulting things about She-Hulk and about geeks in general, I feel my blood pressure spiking. Because this? This gives us a two-fer, a slam not only to a beloved character, but also to comics geeks of both genders all over the country.

And make no mistake, the questions he was asked shouldn’t get a pass, either. “Slut-Hulk”? SERIOUSLY?

And I can’t even muster rage about it, because it’s so goddamn exhausting to see this attitude again and again and again.

But for the record, let’s lay it out:

One, women can like superheroes too. Seriously. We CAN. We DO. And it’s hugely, hugely offensive to dismiss the women in your character lineup as “porn stars”, i.e., only there for the gratification of the men, because HELLO, we’re buying these comics too.

Two, enough already with the tiresome stereotype of geeks and nerds as losers who can’t get dates, who live in their parents’ basements, etc., etc., we’ve heard it all before. And y’know what? If your reaction to our interests is to point and laugh at us as socially inept and unfuckable, you know who we definitely won’t be going out with? YOU.

If you need me, Internets, I’ll be over here, consoling myself with the coming of Agent Carter–and with comics that aren’t belittling my gender. Or belittling me for picking them up in the first place.

* Editing to add: ah, apparently the film actually does have a title now: Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice. I am still not filled with confidence here. Not much room for it with all the PUNCHINGS.

Got up this morning to see there’s yet another SFWA explosion. How many are we up to now, then?

There’s a petition going around, it seems. A petition protesting that the SFWA Bulletin is instituting procedures to try to avoid things like what happened this past summer, during the LAST round of SFWA explosions. Apparently, some people out there are still upset that people might, just might, be justifiably cranky about sexism in the genre.

I first spotted the news when James Nicoll posted about a Twitter thread on it, here. Then I went out to run some morning errands, and when I came back, Dara reported that the petition alluded to in that post had in fact surfaced. James talks about it here, linking in turn to Radish Reviews’ in-depth post.

Radish Reviews has reported that there are in fact two versions of this thing floating around, and addresses both of them here. I read them. And I knew I was in for some hurting the instant I saw the phrase “politically correct” bandied about right out of the gate. In the petition TITLE, even, as well the first paragraph.

Oh, and it gets more fun from there. I particularly like how scare quotes are thrown around “sexism” and “offensive”. And by like, I actually mean, if I facepalm any harder I’ll give myself a concussion.

I’d rant further on this if I could think of anything to say that I haven’t posted about a dozen times already–about how, if the first words out of your mouth are to cry “political correctness!”, that chances are very, very high that you are in fact part of the problem. But then, people who are inclined to cry “political correctness!” aren’t going to put much credence in what I have to say anyway.

So I’m going to simply stick with noting that yeah, I’m still feeling pretty much at peace with my having decided that I’d just as soon stay out of any organization that continues to be this toxic.

Further commentary on the matter:

C.C. Finlay points out that editing in a private organization’s bulletin is NOT censorship

Internets, if like me you follow The Mary Sue and/or the fine ladies over at Smart Bitches Trashy Books, you may have seen one of the scariest phrases the Internet has provided us since Transformers fandom gave us “muffled clank”: i.e., “dinosaur erotica”.

Because this is apparently a Thing That Exists. No, I am not in fact kidding. And RedHeadedGirl, one of the regular guest reviewers at the Bitchery, has valiantly taken one for the team and reviewed Ravished by the Triceratops.

COMEDY. GOLD. Particularly the parts in the comments where she informs the rest of us “I HATE YOU ALL” and how the last thing she reviewed for the site, i.e., the were-hedgehog paranormal romance, was actually better than this.

THEY FOUND A THING THAT WERE-HEDGEHOG PARANORMAL ROMANCE IS BETTER THAN, INTERNETS.

If you need me, I’ll be over here giggling helplessly until my brain recovers. This may take a while.